Free meetings « User Experience & Service Design »
Dates: Wednesdays February 18, March 18, April 22, May 20 and June 17, 2009
Archive for the ‘Conferences and Events’ Category
In the next two months, some Yu Centrik team members will participate in the following events:
- UXTV2008 – Silicon Valley, 2008 October 22, 23, 24
Joëlle Stemp has been accepted in two workshops: “Social Television and Video: Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Outlook” & “Personalized TV Experiences and Authentication Methods”
- Infopresse – Montreal, Tuesday 11 November 2008, at Ex-Centris
Chrystel Black, speaker on “Maximazing User Experience”
- Webcom 2008 – Montreal, Wednesday 12 November 2008, at OACI
Joëlle Stemp, speaker on “Convergence 2.0: new design challenges”
- World Usability Day – Montreal, Thursday 13 November 2008, at CRIM
Yu Centrik team will present an evaluation of Montreal new computerized pay stations usability
- CanUX 2008 – Banff - Alberta, Sunday 16 November 2008 to Tuesday 18 November 2008
Chrystel Black will be part of this Canadian Conference “CanUX 2008, Canadian User Experience Workshop”
Come and meet us there!
World Usability Day aims to promote usability across different countries of the world by inspiring activities and events. The day focuses on showcasing easy-to-learn, easy-to-use, efficient and effective product developments which have been significantly impacted by the concept of usability. The theme of this fourth WUD is transportation. In Quebec, we will celebrate the event in Montreal (CRIM) and Quebec City simultaneously. The event will take place from 18h to 20h in a “happy hour” format. More details to come soon.
An overview of last year’s WUD (8 November 2007)
Yu Centrik’s team will be attending and presenting at the event.
The Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards is an international competition, one of the categories in MindTrek Awards. The other MindTrek Awards are only for entries made in Finland.
The purpose of the competition is to encourage makers of digital media to generate ideas and develop new and innovative ubimedia products & services.
Here is an interesting event, I am part of the jury ;=)
Five speakers linked to the field of video games and coming from various specialties presented their vision of the video games of today and tomorrow at a conference called “New Frontiers in Gaming”. We heard the standard updates in terms of numbers and jobs, but also fringe opinions in terms of industry, design and interactions.
Jonathan Morin, working on Far Cry 2 for Ubisoft, delivered a presentation entitled “Predictability in Video Games: how to avoid preconceived experiences in game design”. Here’s a short summary of his main points.
The execution of a task can have a different cognitive cost depending on its level of complexity, familiarity and it’s concurrence with other tasks… one of the objectives of the video game universe is to allow the player to develop an abstract level of expertise based on his growing skills. Without this key gameplay concept, the player will become fatigued and lose motivation. This could potentially lead to the player abandoning the video game in question.
An essential point evoked by Jonathan Morin is the importance of rendering the least predictable game environment possible to maintain the player at a behavioural level based on rules and knowledge. Rasmussen’s model perfectly illustrates decision making and the development of automation. (Fig. 1)
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Skill Based |
Schemes, action patterns which need a minimum of resources. |
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Rule Based |
Mental procedures where an extra level of analysis is necessary. On top of his perception, the human must recognize a situation and select an appropriate rule before initializing an action. |
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Knowledge based |
Declarative knowledge. Action plans are elaborated on the basis of memorized knowledge and analytic processes |
Fig. 1 - Rasmussen’s model (1986)
To explain this reasoning, Jonathan Morin presented us with 2 simple, recognizable games: Mario Brothers and Pac-Man.
He started by mentioning that a game like Mario Bros. tends to establish patterns that players learn to automate while relinquishing conscious control.
On the other side, he showed us the value of a game like Pac Man, where randomly moving ghosts force the player to develop strategies. Here, the player bases his gameplay on rules.
Eventually, the human adapts to the gameplay environment and learns how to react to events. This is where proper feedback could have the environment react in turn by learning the player’s behaviour pattern. Imagine a fighting game where the computer could modify its behaviour depending on your gameplay style. This would force you to introduce new strategies to accomplish your goal while continually mobilizing your cognitive resources, immersing you in the game and separating you from reality. Although this goal is not new, I don’t believe it has been achieved yet.
From our point of view, it’s interesting to think about how ergonomics seeks instead to create very predictable interfaces so that users can work effectively and efficiently.
Being able to meet and listen to the professionals is always a rewarding experience and we appreciate the SAT organizing these events regularly. By the way, a video of this conference should be on their site this week.
Last night the second ChitChat Yu Centrik was held, and we can say without hesitation that the evening was a success!
Over sixty people from all sides of the Information Technology community of Montreal gathered in the warm vibes of O Patro Vys to witness five unique presentations. The topics were well received with clear crowd reactions of surprise and laughter. Five eloquent presentations on HTML 5, Feng Shui interfaces, Web 2.0, usability experimentation in physics, and the phenomenology of interactions … subjects which are rich and complex, at the very least. However, since the presentation formula was so rigorous, we also got to see the anguish on our presenters faces while they grappled with the possibility that they might not get their idea out in time.
